Scripps Research: 50 years of achievement

K. Barry Sharpless shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The trio's work, says Nobelprize.org, "opened up a completely new field of research in which it is possible to synthesise molecules and material with new properties. Today the results of their basic research are being used in a number of industrial syntheses of pharmaceutical products such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs and heart medicines."
nobelprize.org

K. Barry Sharpless shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The trio's work, says Nobelprize.org, "opened up a completely new field of research in which it is possible to synthesise molecules and material with new properties. Today the results of their basic research are being used in a number of industrial syntheses of pharmaceutical products such as antibiotics, anti-inflammatory drugs and heart medicines."

Was he committing career suicide or making an inspired decision?

Frank Dixon’s colleagues were left to wonder in 1961 when the renowned immunologist left the University of Pittsburgh with orders to transform the little-known Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla into a major center for biomedical research.

The question was quickly answered. Dixon moved to the academic backwater with four other Pitt scientists and began turning Scripps into one of the most innovative research centers in California. The “Pitt Group” also attracted other talented scholars, producing lasting growth. Scripps Research, as the center prefers to be known, is now big, famous, and celebrating 50 years of laser-sharp focus on biomedical research.

The center is home to four Nobel laureates, including Bruce Beutler, who was just chosen to share the 2011 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine. Beutler will soon leave for a post in Texas. But the loss isn’t expected to slow Scripps Research, which obtains more than twice the research money of its better known neighbor, the Salk Institute. The two centers are collaborators, as much as anything else. On Friday, Scripps Research will hold a day-long scientific symposium that’s part of its 50th anniversary. The most famous person in the room will be Sydney Brenner, a Nobel laureate from Salk.

The celebration doesn’t reflect the full history of Scripps Research. The center’s roots date to 1924, when philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps founded the Scripps Metabolic Clinic, a facility that largely focused on diagnosing, treating and researching diabetes.

The clinic, then located in downtown La Jolla, steadily grew over the years. But the center didn’t take off as a major research center until the Pitt Group arrived in 1961 — the same period in which the Salk Institute and the University of California San Diego were getting underway.

The center has since been formally renamed The Scripps Research Institute and is home to 18 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

“TSRI grew from humble beginnings in the golden age of pathology and immunology to become one of the powerhouses in advanced molecular biology, chemistry and molecular genetics,” said David Gollaher, president of the California Healthcare Institute in La Jolla. “It has been able to make transitions as science has changed, staying on the leading edge. The watchwords for TSRI have been forward-thinking and creative adaption.”

Areas of excellence

Cancer

About 550,000 people die of cancer in the United States each year, making it the country’s No. 1 killer. TSRI has helped fight various forms of the disease by completing the synthesis of Taxol, a drug used to treat breast, lung, neck, head and ovarian cancer, and Kaposi’s sarcoma, a cancer frequently linked to AIDS. Taxol also can help prevent restenosis, a narrowing of blood vessels that can damage arteries. TSRI scientists also helped introduce and develop 2-CdA, a drug that greatly extends the lives of people with hairy cell leukemia, a rare cancer of the blood. And the institute created a less costly way to synthesize cortistatin A, a drug that might prove useful in treating macular degeneration and cancer.